Introduction — My 4 Unique Worldviews
Hey, friends!
I'm writing a book How to Beat Procrastination With 5-Minute Sprints, and this blog post is the introduction to the book.
We all have work to do—work that's far less exciting than our favorite distractions:
- If you're a student, studying for tests and writing papers is boring.
- If you're a writer, parts of the process are tedious and uninteresting.
- If you're starting a business, many tasks are monotonous and tiresome.
If you have big goals but struggle with procrastination, this book can help.
But before we dive into the mechanics of overcoming procrastination, let's go over my four unique worldviews.
Worldview #1: We overcome procrastination by making it ridiculously easy to get started. How? We work for 5 minutes and take a short break. We also eliminate common distractions, stack helpful habits, create emotional anchors, and leverage accountability systems.
Worldview #2: We can't wait until we have more motivation. Why? Because that day never comes. In fact, motivation is a reward that comes after we get started, after we make a bit of progress. Waiting for motivation is synonymous with never getting started.
Chuck Close sums this up:
Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
Worldview #3: Every project is composed of 1,000 tiny steps. Procrastination is the refusal to take one step. If we summon the willpower to take one step right now, we'll do it again and again, and everything will fall into place.
So we focus on taking one step forward. We constantly ask ourselves, "What's the next little thing to work on?"
Worldview #4: We procrastinate because we're unsure what the next step is. The solution? We take time to think about what's next. Often, this means decomposing our project into smaller bits and pieces. This decomposition is part of the work and sets us up for success.
Here’s what Dan Richards recommends:
Break down the problem into smaller pieces and start dealing with them one at a time, piece by piece. The smaller the piece, the easier it will be to evaluate it individually and come up with the solution. You can also try solving one problem for one day.
OK, so those are my four worldviews. And everything in the short book flows from them. They set the stage for what comes next.
In the following chapters, you will discover numerous tips, tricks, and tools for overcoming procrastination. These strategies make getting started effortless. They lower the barrier to entry so that getting started is painless.
Literally, anyone can do this. Let's get started!
Read more from How to Beat Procrastination With 5-Minute Sprints.
Thanks to Brynn Stewart, Diane Callahan, Thomas Weigel, and Todd Ericksen for reading drafts of this!